Friday, April 20, 2012

April 20, 2012 9:40 AM--Sports in Uganda

Ugandans often enjoy sports, but not usually the same sports that Americans would normally watch. The English Premier League is probably the biggest thing in sports here. Ugandans love football (aka soccer). Sometimes I think people like teams like Manchester United more than they like the Ugandan Cranes (Uganda’s national football team). Almost everyone here finds an allegiance to one premier league team. It is kind of like how Americans are loyal to their local sports teams, except the premier league teams aren’t local.

Occasionally Ugandans get into American sports, but the American sports that they will watch are not what you might expect. Sometimes Ugandans will watch basketball or even golf. Many Ugandans even know who Tiger Woods is. However, they don’t know what American football and baseball are. I’ve tried explaining both to people here and they just think that Football is the same as rugby and baseball is the same as cricket. This can also be seen as kind of funny, because you can often see people wearing t-shirts and hats with AmericanFootball and Baseball team logos on them. Although this just goes to the fact that many Ugandans wear clothes with American brands and logos on them without understanding anything about what they mean. It blows my mind that they know so much about America, but they have no idea about America’s two biggest sports. Personally, I find this a bit depressing because my love for the Philadelphia Phillies is not usually understood by Ugandans because they don’t even know what baseball is. It’s also a little mind boggling because the Ugandan little league team qualified to go to the little league world series last year, yet the average Ugandan doesn’t even know what baseball is.